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I worked for a wedding planning company in my early twenties and learned a lot during this time. I have always considered myself to be creative, so when my husband and I were planning our wedding and set our budget of $10K, I knew I would have to get clever to make it happen!
We had 14 months from the time we got engaged, until the time we were to get married. The first few months after we got engaged were spent searching for a venue. Unfortunately, we wanted to stick to a budget of $10K since we were paying for almost the entire wedding on our own. After looking at pretty much every venue in our region, it became clear that our budget wouldn't go very far at a venue, if we could even afford one at all.
It was back to the drawing board as we tried to find a place to host our wedding. I even posted on Facebook hoping someone we knew might have land or a connection of some sort, but nothing came along. In the end, we decided to have our wedding on my husband's grandparents' property in the country. We basically had a blank canvas, which was both exciting and terrifying!
Luckily my husband's parents also lived next door, so it worked out that the guys could all get ready at his parent's house, and the girls used his grandparents' house.
Once the location was nailed down, I could finally start planning. I had started secretly pinning wedding ideas prior to being engaged and already knew I wanted a boho, rustic wedding with lots of greenery, mostly neutral colors, and rose gold accents. I started curating materials (thanks Amazon Prime!) and using my wedding planning knowledge to get down to business!
Below is how I achieved the wedding of our dreams for $10K all on my own!
Ceremony
I didn't want to use the plain white chairs you see so often at wedding venues. So I was excited when I found these beautiful wooden chairs at the local rental company we used. While I would have loved to have two sets of chairs (one for the ceremony, and one for the reception), this would have been an extra expense. We needed almost 100 chairs, or 200 if we got two sets, and I wanted to save where we could.
During my wedding planning career, I had to move chairs from the ceremony site to the reception tables on multiple occasions. I knew it wasn't always ideal, but it wasn't uncommon and could be one place we could save. We set the chairs up at the ceremony site (see pic below), and arranged for a few of our ushers to fold and carry the chairs to the reception tent after the ceremony, during cocktail hour. While this may seem daunting, I once had to do this with only one other person to help, and we got it done in under 30 minutes for a wedding of 100 guests! These chairs fold up and you can take 2-4 at a time easily. And luckily our reception site was close by, making this plan work for us. If this doesn't work for you, you may want to opt for two sets!
I wanted to keep the decor simple here, so I just used sprigs of greenery we foraged from the property and used floral wire to attach to every other chair on the ends of the aisle.
Altar
I'm lucky that my dad is very creative and handy, so he helped us build several custom pieces for our wedding, including our altar! I wanted a simple altar, so we opted for a wooden frame, with this macrame wall hanging as a backdrop. We had to add the pieces of white fabric to the sides at the last minute after we realized during the rehearsal that the sun was shining right in my eyes! If I had realized this problem sooner, I would've done something a little more aesthetically pleasing, but it worked. I also made a simple greenery chandelier from a wire wreath frame to tie in the other greenery accents. The last piece was this rug from Amazon to give the altar a cozy feel since it was on a concrete slab. I decided to get a rug because then we could use it in our home afterward too!
Ceremony Confetti
This was optional, but it was a very inexpensive touch that I think was unique and made for a cute photo as we were exiting! I got these clear bags from Amazon, and we pulled leaves off of some wild greens we also foraged from the property to use as an all-natural confetti. And the best part was, no cleanup! I made the insert on canva.com and printed at home.
Bouquets, Boutonnieres and the Ties
I made all of these things myself or with the help of family! In total for all of the florals and ties, we spent maybe $400.
I picked out this floral fabric that we used to make custom ties for the groomsmen, and a pocket square for my husband. I loved the little detail this added, and it helped to make them pop against the bridesmaid dresses and the blue in my bouquet!
All of the bouquets, boutonnieres, and corsages were made from materials that I found on afloral.com, Michael's, and Amazon. I was extremely happy with how everything turned out, and it was pretty inexpensive in comparison to having fresh flowers!
The boutonnieres and corsages used leftovers from the bouquets. They included bunia berries, lamb's ear, preserved leather leaf, preserved roses, and some random greenery from the bouquets that I found on afloral.com and at Michael's. I wrapped in jute and used pins to put on the guys' jackets, and I used these corsage bracelet bands from Amazon for the corsages.
Reception
We had an October wedding and knew that it wouldn't be very cold here in Virginia in October, so we could still host an outdoor wedding. Of course, we needed some sort of shelter, so we decided on a large outdoor event tent. I used a local event rental company that I had worked with many times in my previous job for all of our rental needs such as this.
Once I found the size and style tent we would need, it was time to get down to the design! For lighting, we got 4 strands of these awesome bistro lights, and it gave the PERFECT amount of light for the reception!
We also had to provide restroom facilities for the guests, so we rented one of those fancy air-conditioned restroom trailers. Our guests kept commenting on how nice they were, and it was much better than having them use portajohns or have to go inside his grandparents' house.
Cocktail Hour
We rented five cocktail tables from the rental company, and I purchased these white linen table cloths from Amazon (one thing I learned in the wedding industry is you can typically buy linens cheaper than you can rent them for!). Psstt...only $7 each and I was very happy with the quality! Then I foraged some greenery vine to use to tie around the bases. Unfortunately, we didn't get a good shot of these, but you can catch a glimpse of them in the background of the photo below.
I had my dad build us this hanging wooden table to be used for apps for cocktail hour, and later the cake table. I loved how it turned out, it looked beautiful!
We used a local restaurant as our caterer, and unfortunately, they didn't provide any other services or hor d'ourves. This was another place we ended up saving a TON of money though. We had two nice people as our helpers on the day of (in addition to our wedding planner), and paid them $100 each. We purchased all of the food you see on the table below at Costco, and only spent about $200. I ordered these appetizer plates and these cocktail napkins with rose gold foil from Amazon!
The Bar
Perhaps the most show-stopping piece that my dad built for our wedding was our custom bar! It now resides on our patio and is something we've been able to keep forever. Because we had our wedding on private property, we did not have to worry about acquiring an ABC license, and had two fun ladies man the bar the entire night. They ended up doing it for free as a gift to us!
We served beer and wine, which in total cost us about $500. We got two kegs of beer (a pilsner and an IPA), and purchased 4 cases of wine from Trader Joes. We put the extra bottles of wine in an antique chest that was in my family for a cute little detail!
We rented our glassware from the rental company for cheap to give our outdoor wedding a more formal feel. We had pilsner glasses, wine glasses, and water goblets.
Name Tags
I made these wooden tags with each guest's name on it to tie around their glass for the night. It was a small detail that made a big impact. Most of the guests actually ended up taking theirs home at the end of the night!
I used these wooden tags from Amazon, stained them, and used a paint pen to write each name. I used mini clothespins and jute to pin them to a custom made PVC pipe frame I made and painted rose gold.
The Tables
We got our tables from a local church for free, and of course, the chairs were moved from the ceremony site as I mentioned earlier. We used a light grey table linen on the reception tables, and I purchased these from Amazon ($10 each!). The white linen napkins were a random find online and were super cheap as well! Glassware, plates, and the rose gold flatware were all from the rental company and added a classy touch to our outdoor wedding!
The candelabras were all thrift store finds that we collected a few at a time (in total I had almost 50) and spray painted rose gold with my FAVORITE rose gold spray paint I've found thus far. It's a little pricey, but totally worth it! The white candlesticks came from Amazon as well, and I used this candle adhesive to make sure they wouldn't come loose.
I finished off the tables with more locally foraged greenery and magnolia leaves and lay down the length of each table to make a faux garland. I added in a few rose gold mercury glass votive candle holders and that was it! I mismatched these cylinder votives with these sphere ones.
We used these clear glass bottles on each guest table for water refills!
Head Table
My mother-in-law made this monogram dream catcher for my bridal shower, and we reused it as a centerpiece behind our chairs and it worked perfectly! The bride and groom chairs were antique chairs my dad had that had wicker accents and were a unique touch. I also made "Just Married" jean jackets for when it cooled off at night that took the place of chair signs.
Donut Wall
I am one of those people, I never eat the cake at a wedding. We decided to do donuts instead, and my dad made this donut wall. We got a small cake from Wegman's for cutting, and put these out for guests to grab while dancing, or they could use the custom to go donut bags I made that said "Donut Mind if I Do". I ordered these kraft paper bags from Amazon and used my printer to print the graphic on them.
The donuts were just from Krispy Kreme and very inexpensive.
Final Cost
In the end, we came in right at our budget of $10K for everything. Not mentioned above is the restaurant we had cater, the awesome DJ and MC, our amazing wedding planner that coordinated everything so I could enjoy the day and get ready with my girls, the photographer that took these amazing photos, and an up and coming videographer who made this video of our special day for basically nothing! The budget also included my hair and makeup, my dress, alterations, and all the other little things that made our day a dream!